


Living on the Edge

by carmillathevampireslayer



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:42:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27699824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carmillathevampireslayer/pseuds/carmillathevampireslayer
Summary: A low groan. The sound of someone murmuring to themselves, a heavy, pained exhalation. Leaned against the brick wall, wedged up against the Batmobile’s front tire, was a man. A certain green-haired man who Bruce was none too happy to see.“Joker. Go home. I’m too fucking tired for this.”The man didn’t reply. He simply stared dead-eyed into the vehicle’s door, completely catatonic.
Relationships: Joker (DCU)/Bruce Wayne
Comments: 9
Kudos: 131





	1. Finding

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! Thank you for the very positive reception of this fic - updates may be slow coming but they are in progress!

The sun was rising over the Gotham skyline, and Bruce Wayne was exhausted. After 36 straight hours of being Batman, the man was drained to his core, swearing as he limped towards the roof’s edge, blood slipping down his boot from a slit in the armor above. When he reached the ledge and looked down at the street below, vertigo struck him hard—almost tipping him off the tall building before he even had the chance to unfurl the wings of the Batsuit. With more effort than usual, Bruce launched himself into the air, falling for a time before gliding to a clumsy stop on the street below. As he dragged himself to the Batmobile parked in the alley around the corner, a sound stopped him in his tracks. 

A low groan. The sound of someone murmuring to themselves, a heavy, pained exhalation. Leaned against the brick wall, wedged up against the Batmobile’s front tire, was a man. A certain green-haired man who Bruce was none too happy to see. 

“Joker. Go home. I’m too fucking tired for this.”

The man didn’t reply. He simply stared dead-eyed into the vehicle’s door, completely catatonic. 

Bruce considered his options. The Joker didn’t quite seem up to a fight, so the easiest thing to do would be to just leave him there, and call Gotham PD to pick and have them drag him back to Arkham. Bruce could always take him himself, as he often had, but he didn’t really think he could stand one more minute of being Batman tonight. This morning. Whatever. 

“What do you want, Joker? Can you even hear me?”

No response. The Joker’s purple gloved hand twitched slightly. Blood was leaking from a deep scrape at his temple. 

“Should I call someone to take you back to Arkham?” Bruce vaguely remembered hearing that his supposed arch nemesis had escaped yesterday, a taunt from one of the nameless henchmen he was too busy punching into the concrete floor of a parking garage to listen to, only hours before. 

The Joker looked up at that—an expression in his eyes that Bruce had never seen before. Fear. 

“No Batsy…” he sighed. “I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Well what the hell am I supposed to do with you? Why the hell are you just waiting by my car, it’s like you want to be caught.” Bruce rubbed a hand over his mouth. His head ached from wearing the cowl for so long. 

“Just. Not Arkham. Please.” The Joker’s gaze was fixed somewhere around Bruce’s left cheekbone, he couldn’t even make eye contact. 

_Please?_ thought Bruce. _That’s a new one._ The clown’s demeanor worried him, and not in a way he was used to. 

“Goddamnit,” Bruce swore under his breath. “My luck huh. Fine. Get in the back. I’ll makeshift you a cell in the fucking Batcave. I just want to go home and sleep. Your lackeys have made my life a living hell.”

Bruce swung up the Batmobile’s hinged door and hauled the Joker onto the seat by the back of his purple blazer. Though Bruce could not feel the velvet through his gloves, he knew by the way it squished between his fingers that it was soaked with blood. The Joker groaned again when he landed on his side but made no attempt to sit up. 

Bruce all but collapsed into the driver’s seat, trying not to think about the man lying behind him as he tore through the backstreets of Gotham. 

~~~

The Joker was out cold by the time Bruce pulled into the hanger of the Batcave. Bruce left the clown in the car—he wasn’t going anywhere anyway. Pulling off his armor piece by piece as he struggled to the bathroom, Bruce tugged off his cowl when he reached the sink and stared at his reflection in the mirror. 

His eyes were bloodshot, the bruises beneath them dark. His mouth was twisted in an exhausted grimace. Bruce stared into his own eyes, trying to formulate a plan. There was no cell in the Batcave; there had never been any need for one. The best he could do was the infirmary in Wayne Manor above, where Alfred tended the worst of his injuries. The room could be locked down with a variety of electronic locks, and there were no windows. It would have to do. 

Bruce took the fastest shower of his life and changed into sweats. Even though he had locked the Batmobile from the outside, there was no telling what the Joker could get up to—even half-conscious and bleeding from the head. 

When Bruce returned to the vehicle, the Joker was still lying motionless in the backseat, one arm lolling limply towards the floor. Bruce gritted his teeth and pulled the man into his arms, bridal style, and was shocked to discover how little the Joker weighed. After the clown let out a slight groan with every stair Bruce climbed, he realized one of his hands must be putting pressure on a wound. 

Waiting at the top of the stairs was Alfred, barely concealing the shock on his face. Their eyes met, an apology or an explanation or something formed on Bruce’s lips. Alfred held up a hand and nodded, before turning around and leading the way to the infirmary, not even needing to ask.  
Bruce followed the man to the room in question, trying to decipher whether the pain in his chest was a result of his nightly injuries or for the broken-bodied villain in his arms.


	2. Keeping

Tucked into the infirmary bed, under medical-white sheets, the Joker suddenly didn’t look so ferocious anymore. His usually manic eyes were lightly rested shut, his breathing so shallow and quiet that Bruce was scared for him on some animalistic, survival-oriented level. IVs and other wires hooked up to monitors displaying the Joker’s vital signs crisscrossed his pale chest; Bruce sat dead-eyed in a nearby chair--slightly hypnotized by the rhythmic beeping of the Joker’s heartrate emanating from the machines. 

Alfred, who had become something like Bruce’s de facto doctor since he first became Batman, suddenly re-entered the room looking pensive. For a moment, he simply stood there, as if trying to regain his composure in the presence of a man he had only known to fear until this very moment. 

“Well?” Bruce said at last, breaking the silence. “How bad is he?”

“Unfortunately…” Alfred began, “It is very likely he is heavily concussed. All of the injuries to the rest of his body appear superficial, but he has taken significant head trauma. If he were not...who he is, I would recommend immediately taking him in for an MRI. They could do that for him at Arkham, are you sure it would not be best to return him there?”

“No.” Bruce replied suddenly, and with a vehemence that startled Alfred. “I’m sorry, it’s just...well, he all but begged me not to take him there. Believe me, that was my first thought too from the moment I found him. But Alfred, he seemed almost--I don’t know--terrified by the idea.”

“I suppose it can’t be all that pleasant.” Alfred agreed, seemingly to lighten the mood of their impossible and bizarre situation. “But you know this is not sustainable. Assuming that he recovers, as soon as he is strong enough he will become an immediate danger to us both.”

“You’re right. But I couldn’t just leave him in that alley. I couldn’t.” 

~~~

As Bruce was halfway relieved to discover, the Joker was not in fact in a coma, but merely unconscious, awaking after only a few hours of recovery in the Wayne Manor infirmary. Bruce had not moved from the chair by the bed, where he dozed half-asleep since Alfred had turned in for the night himself. Yet, because somewhere in his subconscious he had been closely monitoring the steady beeping of the Joker’s heart, his eyes flew open the moment the rhythm changed. Before he even knew that he had moved, he stood leaned-over the bed’s railing, grasping the Joker by the wrist. 

“Joker?” He called quietly. His nemesis’ almost translucent eyelids fluttered open at the command, revealing a shocking shade of acid green. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but only a dry, scratching sound came out, followed by a labored wheezing breath. 

“Oh,” Bruce said, turning to grasp a cup of water from the small table to his right, “Here.” He held the plastic cup and the short straw to the Joker’s lips, the water disappearing in seconds as the Joker desperately drank it down. 

With a hand under the Joker’s shoulder, Bruce helped him recline back down to the bed, then sat back down in the chair--staring at him with a dazed expression. 

“Are you...who I think you are?” The Joker managed at last.

A slightly hysterical laugh escaped Bruce at the question. “Well,” he said, “that depends. Do you think I’m Bruce Wayne or Batman?”

“Both.” The Joker replied, peering at him with slitted, suspicious eyes.

“Then yes, I am who you think I am.”

The Joker’s hair, so green it matched his eyes, was matted down to his scalp with sweat and the blood Alfred hadn’t managed to clean off, but was beginning to curl at the ends. His hands gripped the hospital blanket tight, knuckles white with the force of it. 

“What are you going to do with me?” he asked Bruce, once he had finished processing the revelation about the man’s identity. 

“To be honest, I’m not entirely sure.” Bruce sighed, his exasperation evident in his voice. “Bringing you here, to my home, was more of a split-second decision. You were--and are--in awful shape. I couldn’t leave you to die, and I couldn’t take you to Arkham. So here you are.”

The Joker appeared to think this over rather deeply. At last, he began to smile. “Oh Batsy,” he enthused dreamily, “this is a dream come true.”

Bruce scowled. “Don’t fuck with me right now. For some reason, and don’t ask me what, I’m actually trying to help you. You have made my life hell since you showed up in this city, so think of this as a mandatory vacation so that I don’t have to deal with you on the streets. Speaking of which…”

Bruce rose from his seat to retrieve some padded cuffs from a drawer on the other side of the room. Since the Joker was too weak to even attempt resisting him, all he could do was lie there watch as Bruce secured his wrists to the rails on either side of the bed. He tugged on them lightly and sighed, as if he had already known this was an inevitability. 

However, what the Joker currently lacked in physical strength, he could easily make up for with words. “I don’t think they’re tight enough Batsy,” he drawled, batting his eyelashes at Bruce. “Besides, if you really wanted me in your bed all along, you should have just asked. No need to chain me to it”

Bruce glared at him, and tried not to react. “Joker. Shut up and go to sleep. This isn’t even my bed anyway, you’re in the goddamn infirmary. I’ll check on you in the morning.” With that, he stalked out of the room, the door locking and bolting behind him.


End file.
